Omniscient Narrator and Anxiety

[Flaviosky]

Hi dear community,

I wanted to ask for advice to tackle certain aspects of narration, and it's when characters are overwhelmed by anxiety.

People often feel things but can't rationalize them well in a manner "I feel X, therefore I do Y", and also sometimes they can't even describe accurately what they're feeling, despite knowing that it's vaguely hate, or sadness, or pain. It's in those ocasions where people make mistakes based on self-made speculations, acting upon feelings they can't fully precise.

An omniscient narrator would know this, but stating it directly would brush off the sense of confusion I'd like to transmit in these moments. Also, stating the character's thoughts directly using quotation marks could get somewhat messy (although not impossible) for the reasons stated above.

Here's a small fragment of what I'm trying to do, with a clear break between a descriptive paragraph and the subsequent chaotic thoughts. I'm not pleased with this solution but I don't know how to do it better.

Thanks!

PD: "Miasmon" is a humanoid race, roughly people with animal ears and tail. The scene takes place in a filthy coastal town at the northern end of the continent, full of brothels and low-end taverns for the sailors that come and go.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------​

Diane is inside the room that soon will share with Natalie, in a narrow bunk bed. She cries, full of sorrow and anger, she never felt so alone, so far from home. A dim light enters the room through the dirty windows, coming from the few torches and magic orbs that still are not enough to illuminate the town appropriately. There’s people outside, filling the air with the false laughter fueled by alcohol and miasmon prostitutes paid to appear happy.

She hates this place, she hates Natalie after having her behave so aggressively with her, maybe because she finally fell for Raffale, probably convinced by those two miasmon girls. She hates Philippe, her mage friend being so cold with her lately, and now so attentive with Isalvine...What do those miasmon girls have anyway, that seem to drive men so mad? Valerie is so shallow, to uninteresting, yet there is Enzo, being so stupid, it’s obvious that Raffale has something, some sort of magic that is doing this...He’s not the good guy everyone think he is. Maybe she just needs Gareth to kill him, but the sword...Natalie could get a hold on it but...Why is everyone doing this to her? Why does she feel so much pain every time she gets angry? Why can't she just stop hating herself?

 

[scholar-in-distress]

Don't know if it helps, but 'omniscient narrator' does not necessarily mean 'omniscient narrator willing to make full disclosure', if you know what I mean.
Besides that, omniscient narrator knows as much, as there is to be known. If something is undetermined—like, say, something a person feels—the narrator may be aware of the emotional conundrum but not particular emotion, because that has not been 'decided' yet because what the individual experiences is emotional chaos. So, if a person feels lost in emotional turmoil, the narrator knows exactly that.
Of course you may reveal—if it suits you—how that emotion will develop in the future, if the future is determined in your world, or the narrator may speculate on what has not been determined yet (because there is nothing for the narrator to know on the subject at this point).

 

[Wayne Mack]

I suggest treating this section as close third person rather than third person omniscient. As a reader, I do not want to observe Diane being angry, I want to feel her anger. I would start with something showing Diane is angry: a slammed door, a thrown vase, a scream. I would then skip all of the backstory pieces and the full recital of the cast of characters -- focus on a couple of small incidents that she appears to blow out of proportion. I think a little more attention needs to be given to Raffale. She hates Natalie and Phillipe, but she wants to actually kill Raffale. Skip Diane's psychoanalysis in the last two sentences; this pulls the reader out of experiencing the emotion and into an analytical state.

I think there are a lot of plot lines going on in this short section. If expressing some of the backstory and rationale is valuable, consider following this with either a discussion between Diane and a best friend or an argument between Diane and an adult.

 

[Flaviosky]

I suggest treating this section as close third person rather than third person omniscient.

This sounds nice, I'll give it a try.

focus on a couple of small incidents that she appears to blow out of proportion

How? Thoughts and memories in quotation marks? Third person telling the way is already written?

She hates Natalie and Phillipe, but she wants to actually kill Raffale

This is actually something quite whimsical. Her hatred comes from her paranoia and jealousy. Maybe I have to add some sorrow to show the bipolar and volatile nature of her hatred.

I think there are a lot of plot lines going on in this short section.

Well, yeah. Part of the reason of her emotional collapse are these rather small events that combine with her frustration and loneliness.

 

[Wayne Mack]

How? Thoughts and memories in quotation marks? Third person telling the way is already written?

When I am writing, I do not use quotation marks for thoughts or feelings. If the thought is expressed in third person, I simply use plain text, while if the thought is expressed in first person, I use italics. I tend to put a vast majority of the thoughts in third person and use first person when I want to really emphasize the thought. I have found that a third person thought sequence with a single first person injection seems to work well and I have not heard any objections from my writing group readers.

The challenges I saw with the posted section were: an attempt to mix emotional and analytic thought, and an overload of background details. For an emotional scene, have the character focused on the present and just present the character's feelings. Do not try to explain why the character is feeling that way and leave it up to the reader to figure it out from context before or after the emotional scene. For analytic thought, have the character in a more relaxed, contemplative state.

Perhaps because it is an extract after the story has started, I felt overwhelmed with the number of characters introduced in a single paragraph and could not keep them straight without going back and rereading the previous paragraph and previous sentences. Because of this, the details presented were missed as my mind was busy trying to figure out who was who.

I think you have a well thought out plan for where this story is heading an there are hints of background conflicts. One of the things I have found is that the reader needs time to grasp the various aspects of the plot and setting, so it is best to slowly dole out information (as a side benefit, the go slow approach also increases the word count).